In the April 27, 2015, issue of TIME Magazine, Dr. Tom Catena was identified as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." Dr. Tom is a family practice physician who has been in the Nuba region for seven years, as the only remaining physician at the hospital he helped found.
Dr. Tom took a short break from his seven days a week schedule to speak with me. After an extensive bombing campaign by the Khartoum government, his facility is the only referral hospital in the entire Nuba Mountain region of Sudan. He is very grateful for VOM’s support. He thanked us for the medication we provide, and even more importantly, for the prayers that are generated from people around the world.
While at the hospital, we also met with an 11 year-old boy, Mansour, a little over 48 hours after he was injured in an attack and prayed with him.
Mansour was wounded by shrapnel entering his left chest. He was carried for 11 hours to get to the hospital with a sucking chest wound. When he arrived, Dr. Tom put a drainage tube in his chest, then opened his chest and performed surgery, repairing two holes in his diaphragm, and saving Mansour’s life.
I asked Dr. Tom about the impact of prayer on his ministry. He responded, "Prayer means everything. The only way we go ahead here is the grace of God, and the grace of God is manifest by people praying for us here. We see miracles here every day, and it is not through our own strength or own doing, it is all through the grace of God."
Dr. Tom continued, "I would ask people that are in the U.S. to keep praying for us here, to keep praying for the Nuba, to pray for resolution of this conflict, to pray for our strength so that we can keep going ahead with the work here, and know that your prayers are much appreciated by everybody here."
Watch this one minute interview with Dr. Tom and listen as he describes how prayer is the foundation of everything they do.
Dr. Jason Peters oversees Global Partnerships and travels frequently to meet with our persecuted sisters and brothers. He has ministered in 39 countries, as diverse as Cuba, India, Sudan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia and Nigeria. Jason ministered as a military chaplain for more than 18 years, with assignments at the Pentagon, the US Air Force Academy and as a faculty member of the Air Force Chaplain Corps College, where he directed Crisis and Trauma training. Jason and his wife Kimberly lived overseas for several years, where two of their five children were born.
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